Fit in with a new culture: theories about cultural awaraness

Fit in with a new culture is not easy, and we usually don't know why we do something in a wrong way or why people don't understand our way of thinking or working. For that reason, to understand it and to improve our skills in a new country, I'm gonna analyze Spanish and Finnish cultures using three theories about cultural awaraness. Now maybe everything is easier!

THE LEWIS MODEL

The model of Lewis is nowadays one of the most useful, especially to clasificate people in different tasks, jobs and localitations depend of their traits profile. This model says that there are three dimensions that englobe different attitude profiles, and each one shows the mean culture behaviour in different countries and world areas. So, this model divides culture behaviour in three areas:

-Linear-Active: people with this behavior are task-oriented, highly-organized planners, complete action chains by doing on thing at time and plan everything step by step. They are needed to organise, see problems, analyse consequences and plan how to get the group goals. It is the typical culture behaviour of North America, Britain, New Zeland, Australia and Northern Europe.

-Multi-active: people with that behavior are emotional, loquacious and impulsive, they attach so much importance to family, feelings and people in general. They like to do many things at the same time and they are needed to generate enthusiasm, motivate, persuade and create a positive social atmosphere. It is a typical profile of people from Southern Europe, Mediterranean countries, South America, sub-Saharan Africa, Arab and other cultures in the Middle East and India.

-Reactive: these people are good listeners and rarely initiate a discusion, they prefer to listen. They are very polite and don´t interrupt although their thoughts are different. They are needed to harmonise, see the big picture and think carefully where there is a problem in the group. This profile is typical of Asia except India.

So, Lewis says that everyone has a profile that fits in one of these dimensions, and at the same time, this dimensions shows the behaviour of different places. So, a person fits in a different country by his behaviour profile. This is very useful for companies to do castings to search the best person to do a task, and it is so useful also to understand why some countries need a especial profile to do something. We actue and work following culture habits and behavoiurs, and without knowing it, we only accept people that works in the same way and following the same values than us.

Spanish and Finnish Behavior

If we look The Lewis Model we can analyse the behavior and way of working of my home country (Spain) and my residence country (Finland). This analysis is so important to make my work efficient, because if I don’t aproach my way of working to their point of view about work, my contribution is not useful.

If we look at the graphic we see that Spain is near Multi-Active area. It means that in general, Spanish people are talkative, emotional and we like to do a lot of things at the same time. It’s a bit problematic when we want to work in a system like Finnish system, because they are Lineal-Active, so they are task-oriented, like to plan and organise everything step by step and analyse everything.

It is true, I indentify myself with that profile, I’m so emotional and I like to do a loto f things at the same time. On the other hand,  I’ve lived here for one month and I saw this way of working: finnish people concentrate more than me and wark harder because they focus their goals in their projects, so they are more efficients when they work. So, to adapt myself to this organized way of working, I must be less impulsive, think more and leave emocional thoughts when I’m working. Here, people is more effective thatn emotional! Maybe,  if I change this traits, I would be more effective in Finnish system.